Month: May 2012

In my other life (previous life? it’s hard to tell any longer), I used Twitter. I used it a lot, and it was awesome. I met a ton of great people (and some not so great) and the community was small and tight-knit and inclusive. This community centered around the wine industry (shout out to all my wine friends reading this!) and was vibrant and fun and casual and real. I do miss those early days on Twitter. Yes, I am reminiscing about four years ago, shaddup already.

Then 2009 happened: it seemed that Twitter started to lose its shine for wine folks. Sure, some people stayed on, but most of the rest of the (using air-quotes here) community had moved to Facebook, or was fully on its way toward that. 2010 brought groups and the switchover accelerated. Now it seems that the majority of useful wine conversations seem to be taking place in Facebook groups (and there are several of them for wine, and I happen to belong to some of them).

So when the time came to find a film community to support my new vocation, I figured that I would find them on Facebook as well. Not so, it seems.

For whatever reason, I’ve found that film folks have stayed on Twitter. There are film groups in Facebookland, but they don’t seem to have any real community behind them, no zeitgeist, no banter. Everyone posts their latest Vimeo or YouTube films or videos and figures they’ve done their job.

I have two competing theories about why film people haven’t moved to Facebook. It could be that filmmakers were not jumping into the social media hot tub as early on as wine folks (which, if you knew the wine industry, you’d think was ass-backward). Either that, or there’s something about Twitter’s immediacy that seems to resonate better with film folks.

The jury is totally out on this; I am still actively seeking community in both FB and Twitter. I just seem to be making more progress with the little blue bird of late.

You know, when you’re working in the creative realm, there’s always talk of “the process” of creating. And usually it’s accompanied by key phrases like “embrace”, “accept”, “be one with” and “it’s all part of”.